In the US meat and milk from animals cloned to give higher yields have been sold since the Food and Drug Administration ruled in 2008 that they were safe for human consumption.

Last month the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said that such products should also be approved for sale in Britain.

The verdict came two years after the FSA was engulfed in controversy when it confirmed that meat from the offspring of a cloned cow had been eaten in the UK without a licence being obtained.

The technology continues to face staunch opposition from groups such as Compassion in World Farming, the Soil Association, the RSPCA, the World Wildlife Fund and the consumer group Which?

Criticisms include claims that research into the safety of consuming cloned animal products has been insufficient to reach definitive conclusions and the argument that cloned animals experience greater suffering.

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The Soil Association, which promotes organic food and farming, said in a letter to the FSA that the lack of research into “toxicity and allergenicity” of cloned products was “particularly worrying”.

It added that it was “also opposed to the cloning process because it is so damaging to animal welfare.”

According to the RSPCA, the cloning process “involves scientific procedures that can cause pain, suffering and distress to the animals” which makes it unsuitable for “frivolous purposes.”

It says fewer than five per cent of cloned embryos can be expected to survive to birth and those born alive often have abnormalities and a reduced lifespan.

Geneticists have said that cloning is essentially “an extension of the process by which twins arise in nature” and therefore raises no particular safety concerns in terms of human consumption.

Jim Paice, the food and farming minister, said earlier this year that the Government, along with the European Commission, considers it unnecessary to ban food from the offspring of cloned animals from ending up on supermarket shelves.